1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to data processing and in particular to data communication by data processing systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved method and system for data transfer utilizing a Web Service folder interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer applications often require access to data from multiple sources within a network, such as the Internet. In heterogeneous environments, data is typically stored in different formats, and users can extract, manipulate, and/or distribute data in different contexts. Web Services are software systems that support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network that includes data in multiple formats. Web Services are typically application programming interfaces (APIs) that a client can access over a network in order to perform requested services using a remote system.
When a client application accesses a conventional Web Service, the Web Service may require the client to use any gathered information within a customized application or to manually transcribe data to another format. For example, a client application may need to convert incoming data into a format typically used by local computer users (e.g., rich text format (RTF) documents, text files, presentations, or spreadsheets). It is thus difficult and tedious for a client application to locally manage data that the client imports from a Web Service. Conventional Web Services enable clients to connect to a web page that controls calls to the Web Service from the back end and returns data in the form of a web page or a customized local client application. However, conventional methods of providing customized local client applications lack flexibility and are costly to build.